


temporary

by brokke



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, F/F, Pre-Canon, Snapshots, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26644510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokke/pseuds/brokke
Summary: What they had was fleeting.
Relationships: Suzie Costello/Toshiko Sato
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	temporary

Tosh wraps the blankets tight around her chest.

The morning light is a mid-winter grey; there’s a bite in the air, a new coastal chill, arriving with the first of the rain. She’d stand up to shut the window if she had any clothes. 

She feels a hand on the small of her back, a tender knuckle brushing against the skin, reaching out for her attention.

She turns.

“What’s going on in your head?” Suzie asks, removing her gentle touch.

Tosh tries not to want it back.

She shakes her head, the familiar nervous smile working its way back onto her lips. It’s comforting, a default. Uncertainty greets her like an old friend.

“Nothing.”

“Y’sure?”

“Yep.” She bites her lip. Turns away. Watches the rain run down the window in rivulets.

Suzie pushes herself up with a sigh, mirroring Toshiko and moving closer. She pictures the scene in her mind; reaching back to Suzie, finding warmth in an embrace. But this isn’t that kind of arrangement.

“There’s something.”

“Isn’t there always?”

With Torchwood, with their _arrangement_ , there is never a moment of peace. She’ll lose herself in ecstasy and wake up from the haze when it’s over, the thoughts cycling through her mind. She knows, really; has known since it began. Since their first bottle of wine as friends and the first kiss in a half-lit room. She knows this won’t go on. How it’s nothing but temporary.

The first step is to say it.

“I don’t know how long this can last.”

“It doesn’t have to.”

Suzie had known from the start, too.

“I can’t do this,” Tosh says, the words spilling out no matter how little she wants to say them. “I’m not like you, or Owen… I need to know there’s a way forward.”

“We’re colleagues. It was never going to be anything more.”

She nods, slow and reluctant. The shadow of Torchwood could never leave them.

Suzie tries a smile. It’s unnatural. “We had a good time, though.”

It’s not her. It’s the distraction and the sex and an escape from the blood behind Suzie’s eyes - the images in her head that Tosh knows they all see.

In a selfish way, she longs for the opposite. She wants to think _it’s about me._

Tosh faces her again, turning where she sits. “You don’t seem to mind.”

Suzie reaches out. Takes Tosh’s hand in hers. Traces over her fingers, one at a time, her thumb moving idly. “That’s where you’re wrong. I mind more than you know.”

“Then you’ve…” she stops to let the words find her. “Accepted.”

Suzie looks down. When she returns Tosh’s gaze, she takes her face in her hands; it’s gentle as always, a simple gesture that ignites something indescribable in her chest. “Yes. I don’t want to mislead you.”

They lean in, inch by inch, pulling each other close. Tosh will embrace the kiss like the first time, pushing away the thoughts of endings.

“Why aren’t you fighting it?” she asks against Suzie’s lips. Her voice is little more than a whisper.

“We’re Torchwood, Toshiko,” Suzie replies. “Our good things have a habit of fading away.”


End file.
